Singing the Shirt

This text derives from the script of the film The Song of the Shirt (2020) and the audio description for the film produced by Collective Text (Sandra Alland with Rosita McKenzie, Emilia Beatriz and Kerstin Schroedinger). Departing from Ernst Toller’s play Die Maschinenstürmer (1922), set in early 19th century England, the setting is relocated to the declined cotton industry in post-2011 Egypt and to post-industrial Poland. In an exchange of letters about their collaborative work on storytelling and handcrafts, two friends, Nawara and Kerstin, seek practices of weaving the stories and telling the textiles as subversive forms of sabotage that may form a new reading of the Luddites for our contemporary struggles.